YouTube to end its Annotations Editor from May 2

21/03/2017

YouTube announced that the Annotations Editor will be discontinued beginning May 2. Annotations Editor was launched in 2008, before the world went mobile.

From May 2, users will not be able to add new annotations to the videos or edit the existing ones; all they can do is delete them. The existing annotations will only appear to the users who are watching videos on a desktop.

1) Annotations do not work on mobile

The use of end screens and cards is rising, as end screens were made available to all the users in October last year. With the help of End Screens feature, you can add thumbnail overlays during last 5 to 20 seconds of your YouTube video.

Muli Salem, Product Manager at Google said in YouTube’s official blog post, “With 60 percent of YouTube’s watchtime now on mobile, why go through the work of creating annotations that won’t even reach the majority of your audience? End Screens and Cards work on mobile and desktop, giving you more bang for your buck.”

2) Use of Annotations has decreased by over 70%

Cards appear in the top right corner f your video and let you link it to YouTube playlists or videos, promote a website and ask for funding, so creators prefer to use cards over annotations.

And, YouTube explained: “End Screens and Cards generate seven times more clicks across YouTube than annotations. In fact, viewers generally don’t love annotations, and on average they close 12 annotations before they click on one of them. And more and more viewers turn off annotations altogether.”